In the
virtual world of cyberspace, often the only way
your customer can evaluate you is your communication
- your language, presentation and style. Your
e-mail/web-site/ presentation etc. are your faces
to the world - and these must inspire sufficient
confidence in your customer to transact business
with you or at least take you seriously. This
is a marked difference from traditional business
and you should be aware of this feature of e-commerce.
You may be well known in your own country but
the overseas customer has no way of knowing how
true your claims are. The only touchstone he/she
has is your communication - you must make sure
they are really professional looking. The professional
visitors must immediately know from your offer
that it has been written by another professional.
I have written quite a few articles on communication
style, language, format etc. Please check previous
issues of FAIDA (http://www.infobanc.com/faida_old.htm)
In this article, we focus on website - that
virtual entity representing you to your customers.
But I do not have a website
If you take e-commerce seriously - please get
a professional website at the earliest. In today's
market, it is not only important but ESSENTIAL.
A well designed, professional looking website
conveys a positive image about your company and
helps buyers locate you through search engines.
It is also much more economical to have website
rather than mailing printed brochures.
In early days of Internet, website was a costly
business. It also required special skills available
only in major cities. So, most companies did business
with only e-mail or a few pages in free sites
like geocities. Possession of website was not
considered necessary for evaluating a company
or assessing credibility.
Not anymore ! Today you must have a full-fledged
website with URL like yourcompany.com or yourcompany.biz
- nothing less. And it no longer costs the earth
- you can get a reasonably fast, professionally
designed website with advanced features like interactive
forms, CSS etc. within Rs. 10,000 (USD 250) all
inclusive (i.e. domain name + web-host + design).
Besides building credibility, attracting customers,
and promoting products - it will also give you
a lifelong e-mail address that no ISP can take
away.
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If you need advice or want our professional help
for your website design -
please feel free to contact me.
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Virtues of Professional Website
A website is not enough - it must be reasonably
fast and designed professionally. Please consult
a skilled and experienced professional rather
than giving the design job to your son or nephew
or friend who has just done a computer course.
We have written many articles on features of a
professional web-site. Please see earlier issues
of FAIDA. There's also plenty of resources in
the Net. Here, let's examine the features of a
messy website.
How to Design Web-sites all
wrong
Some of the purposes of a messy website are:
- Make it excruciatingly difficult to reach
- Thoroughly confuse hapless Columbus who could
reach it
- Drive Away Customers
- Project a negative image about the company
Some Suggestions on how to accomplish
above
- Make the first page 500 Kb or larger. Splash
all kinds of images, colours and fonts. Your
purpose is to make every visitor wait for at
least a few minutes before he/she can have a
glance of your deadly design.
- Look for a cheap and slow web-host. It will
make your job easy.
- Confuse people about the company, so that
they get no idea what kind of product or service
you offer, much less what they cost or how they
work.
- Never reveal contact details of the company.
If you must include contact details, bury it
deep inside the site with links only from irrelevant
and seldom visited section.
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